The emperor is so discomposed by the rumour, that he has forbidden the very name of the Goths to be mentioned in his presence again.' 'For my part,' continued Vetranio, drawing Camilla towards him, and playfully tapping her little dimpled hand, 'I am in anxious expectation of the Goths, for I have designed a statue of Minerva, for which I can find no model so fit as a woman of that troublesome nation.

I am informed upon good authority, that their limbs are colossal, and their sense of propriety most obediently pliable under the discipline of the purse.' 'If the Goths supply you with a model for anything,' said a courtier who had joined the group while Vetranio was speaking, 'it will be with a representation of the burning of your palace at Rome, which they will enable you to paint from the inexhaustible reservoir of your own wounds.' The individual who uttered this last observation was remarkable among the brilliant circle around him by his excessive ugliness.

Urged by his personal disadvantages, and the loss of all his property at the gaming-table, he had latterly personated a character, the accomplishments attached to which rescued him, by their disagreeable originality in that frivolous age, from oblivion or contempt.

He was a Cynic philosopher.
His remark, however, produced no other effect on his hearers' serenity than to excite their merriment.

Vetranio laughed, Camilla laughed, Julia laughed.